UFOs. A hallmark of the 60’s and 70’s – mysterious flying saucers and shapes that abduct people for strange experiments. As cool as they may sound, they’re generally seen as just about as real as fairies and bigfoot, a product of LSD, hippies, and a paranoid government. But it may surprise you to learn that UFO sightings aren’t a thing of the past, and some very powerful people seem to take them seriously today.

According to Sam Monfort, a doctoral student at George Mason University, who used information from the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), such sightings are at an all time high, going from “around 5,000 in 1980, to roughly 45,000 in 2010” (Fox News).

Still skeptical? According to a New York Times article published a few months ago, UFO researcher Leslie Kean was told by former intelligence officials and a defense contractor that the US Government has been secretly funding UFO research. The “Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program,” which investigated “unidentified aerial phenomena,” secretly received $22 million dollars from the defense budget over a period of 5 years from 2007 – 2012, when it was ‘terminated’. Kean spoke to Luis Elizondo, who was in charge of this program. Oddly, the military claimed to have given up on UFOs in 1969.

Elizondo said in an interview with CNN that “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone,” saying also that there were quite a few strange craft identified by this program which exhibit feats unexplainable by modern technology (space.com).

In a Fox News interview, Kean explained “We do know that there are objects in the sky, and sometimes in the water, that demonstrate extraordinary capabilities that the experts say we don’t have on this planet…We don’t have the capability of creating the kind of technology, or apparent technology, that’s been observed by high-level officials for many, many decades.” Kean explained that 90 to 95% of UFO sightings are rationally explainable, but that there is still that last 5 to 10%. An example she gave was in O’Hare airport, 2006, where multiple witnesses saw a metallic saucer floating in the air for five minutes, before shooting into the clouds. The FAA refused to investigate.

Whether it’s little green men or the Chinese military, one thing’s for sure: UFOs are alive and well.